No jobs? The salary differential in entry level jobs is much smaller than in high paying jobs between Detroit in NY, and rent differential is vast. If you take

No jobs? The salary differential in entry level jobs is much smaller than in high paying jobs between Detroit in NY, and rent differential is vast. If you take many of the homeless who cannot take any realistic job, the difference in salaries is 0. Even including driving (which you don't need to do much more in declining/stably cheap, but still dense, older cities) it's still cheaper. Walkable housing would fix it for a very small slice of the people, as far as I can tell.